Amy Schneider’s reign ends after 40 wins on Jeopardy!
The champion racked up $1,382,800 over the last 8 weeks
Aux News Jeopardy!
Oakland engineer manager Amy Scheider’s history-making Jeopardy winning streak has come to an end. The champion won 40 games in a row before losing on Wednesday to Chicago librarian Rhone Talsma on Wednesday. She still ends on a high note, with the second highest number of wins behind current host Ken Jennings, and is the most successful transgender contestant in the show’s history.
“It’s really been an honor,” Schneider says. “To know that I’m one of the most successful people at a game I’ve loved since I was a kid and to know that I’m a part of its history now, I just don’t know how to process it.”
Wednesday’s game turned out to be a nail-biter, as Schneider entered Final Jeoprady with $27,600, while Talsma had $17,600. Schneider’s usually builds up a size-able lead against the other two contestants going into the final round, but with Talsma snagging the second Daily Double question at the last minute, a mere $10,000 separated the two.
“I had thought that Rhone was going to be tough going into it,” Schneider says of her opponent. “I loved hanging out with him, we had great conversation before the taping, but I could tell that he was here to play and that he was going to be good. I still came very close to winning, but I did feel like maybe I was slipping a little bit. And once it was clear that he was fast on the buzzer, I knew it was going to be a battle all the way.”
The final category was in “Countries of the World,” with the question: “The only nation in the world whose name ends with an H, it’s also one of the 10 most populous.”
Talsma answered the question correctly with, “What is Bangladesh?” while Schneider provided no answer at all. Talsma finished in first place with a score of $29,600 while Schneider finished second with $19,600.
“I’m still in shock,” Talsma says. “This is my favorite show… I was so excited to be here and I just wanted to do my best. I did not expect to be facing a 40-day champion, and I was excited to maybe see someone else slay the giant. I just really didn’t think it was going to be me, so I’m thrilled.”
In the last year, Jeopardy! has seen two record breaking champions, racking up a mountain of earnings and wins. Prior to Schneider’s streak, Matt Amodio racked up $1,518,601 over the course of 38 games, becoming the third highest earner in the game show’s history. Schneider surpassed Amodio’s number of wins earlier this week, and with her winnings holds the slot for fourth highest earner behind Amodio, James Holzhauer, and Jennings with $1,382,800.
Talsma will compete against two new competitors tomorrow. Schneider will once again appear on Jeopardy! in the Tournament of Champions where she will compete against Amodio.
31 Comments
Thank you for being the first article to use this headline but actually include a picture of her in the header instead of whoever it was that beat her.
So disappointed for Amy. She was awesome all the way through, including in yesterday’s game. Rhone was good, but not particularly great. He put himself in contention by nailing a Daily Double late in the second round and doubling his score. At that point, there weren’t quite enough points left on the board to allow Amy to secure a runaway. But she damn well tried – she probably answered 7 of the 8 or so remaining questions correctly. She will be missed in our household, for sure.
I do think Rhone would have easily won a normal day; Amy’s speed is hard to beat, and Rhone was fast enough to beat her more often than most of her competitors and he had pretty high accuracy too. And he had the nerve to actually go for the full daily double, which many people do not.
Disappointed? With a winning streak that’s second place for consecutive days and fourth place to overall winnings, I’m not feeling the least bit sorry for Amy. It was a titanic run, but all giants must eventually fall.
I was hoping she could make a real run at Ken’s streak. She had the goods to get there.
She was awesome, and put her opponents in a hole so quickly the game was often wrapped up halfway through the first board. I’m not surprised a Daily Double was essential to beating her, she probably racked up over $10,000 on DDs per episode (I’d like to see the stat)…it’s not a live by the sword die by the sword thing: that’s why the DDs are there and even if you miss them someone else didn’t get them, so it was probably more like a $15,000 swing per episode from her both finding them and getting them right. The nutty thing is she was so good she often could have won without them. Despite how much I liked her it is nice to see the show go back to standard format. I almost wish they could have hit the snooze button and had her go away and come back in a few weeks at one point, or had another tournament in the middle just to break it up. I can’t wait to see her play the other champions, particularly if she curb stomps Immodium.
Great job, Amy.I figured out Bangladesh before the music was up.
Me too! I just started mentally jumping around the globe and got it with about 5sec left. I felt so bad for Amy for having it come down to pulling one country’s name out of a hat.
I was so sure it was an easy final and then was surprised to see only one person get it. I assumed 10 most populous countries would be on most Jeopardy contestants’ cheat sheets, but then I’m not sure I could come up with it with that much pressure on me.
I got stuck trying to figure out a country that ended in ah or eh. I’ll miss Amy but the TOC will be fun
I got stuck trying to figure out a country that ended in ah or eh. Same! I couldn’t get myself out of that mental trap.
I actually questioned myself because I didn’t think Bangladesh had THAT many people in it.
Yeah…when I was a kid it was still part of Pakistan, which I thought of as “that country that’s much smaller than India”. And it’s only (the former) East Pakistan. And it’s the 8th most populous country in the world!
Weird how nobody got upset about long Jeopardy streaks until she came along.
People complained about Ken’s streak. A lot. A big contingent of fans were very mad about the change to the five-episode limit.People complained about Holzauer. People complained about Amodio.
I’m one of those people, sort of – I hadn’t really complained about anyone’s streaks, but I like to see some ebb and flow of champions. Fifteen, maybe twenty consecutive wins is about is much as I’m excited to see and then after that I start rooting for someone to knock them off their perch. Particularly lately, with James, Matt and Amy all coming fairly close together. I still don’t dislike the removal of the five-win limit, because it’s interesting seeing how long someone can go on their own, even though it comes at the risk of periodically turning the show into ‘Watch the superchamp steamroll everyone’. It does make it that much more exciting when they lose, however.With all of that said, it’s pretty clear that being transgender has put Amy in the sights of some people in a way that Ken, James or Matt were not.
Of course Amy gets unfair criticism that the others don’t, I just don’t think it has much to do with win streaks. The anti-trans folks were mad the first day she won.Personally I have mixed feelings about her losing. I enjoyed watching her, but like you I think it’s good to keep mixing it up and getting new people in.I also kind of love that one queer champion was replaced by another. Deny the bigots some of their satisfaction at seeing Amy lose.
The producers wised up that by dumping the game limit, they essentially guaranteed continuous must see TV events when the next great contestant starts racking up wins. Before that Jeopardy was slow and steady, but with each of these champs, they rode that wave.
I never complained about the streaks themselves. They are very fun to watch. For Ken, James and Matt, they had quirks or weird personalities that made them just unlikable enough to root against. It was really difficult to root against Amy because she’s very likeable.
People have always had issue with the winning streaks, to the point it’s led to a bit of a conspiracy theory that the producers have intentionally made the game easier to increase the likelihood of a winning streak because they get the show so much press coverage.
So if they’re just complaining about Schneider’s winning streak, they’re likely just one of those fans. If their complaints about Schneider are on a more personal level, then it’s probably that other things you’re insinuating.
Please, I was well bored with Amodio. It’s nothing against either player at all; the show just isn’t as fun to watch when every game is decided by half time.
WTF are you talking about? Jennings was a huge broken base for years, Holzhauer is still hated by a lot of people, and Amodio was extremely divisive. Just because you’re ignorant doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.
“Wednesday’s game turned out to be a nail-biter, as Schneider entered Final Jeoprady with $27,600,”Well, there was her problem right there. She was supposed to enter Final Jeopardy, and she took a wrong turn. Dammit.
Fare thee well Amy, your a terrific contestant and a great person. I look forward to the tournament of champions eagerly.
I just want to thank you for not posting this until today. Unfortunately, I saw a spoiler headline on another site before it aired in CA. That’ll teach me!
it was a bummer to see her lose but I teared up a little seeing Rhone’s genuinely stunned happiness at winning and upsetting a champion of Amy’s caliber.
Today (the day after), at the start of the show they replayed Rhone’s reaction shot. It was gold.
It’ll be nice to watch Jeopardy again for a couple weeks before yet another super champ shows up this season and I ditch the show for the fourth time this season.
Not going to ditch the show regardless of who has been champion or how long, but I like to see a lot of close games with relatively few runaways.
“the most successful transgender contestant in the show’s history.”She’s also the most successful *woman* to play, too, yes? That feels like a big deal, and one that would be worth highlighting too, unless I missed it somewhere.
Great champion, but those constant runaways were getting boring, watching her get uncatchable so fast in so many games. Just like during the Matt Amodio run, some of the other contestants made me wonder how they got on the show, but I probably I just pay attention more when there is a long-term champion going and the contrast between them.I had not noticed with other contestants before, but you could see Amy calculate that she was uncatchable and often stop answering questions when the amount of money on the board was not enough to catch up to half of her total, so why risk a wrong answer when you already won if you just stopped. Great strategy.